The first of a series of lectures delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Southampton buildings, Chancery Lane, Nov. 27, 1846, on the actual condition of the metropolitan grave-yards / by Geo. Alfd. Walker.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The first of a series of lectures delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Southampton buildings, Chancery Lane, Nov. 27, 1846, on the actual condition of the metropolitan grave-yards / by Geo. Alfd. Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Before endeavouring to bring more immediately under your notice some of the facts on which the above conclusion of the Committee was based, we may pass rapidly in review a few circumstances connected therewith. Although I may fairly take occasion to express my regret that a question of such incalculable importance as that of the condition of the resting-places of the dead in the Metropolis should, up to the present period, have excited so little apparent attention, I am pleased to observe that recent events have again directed the public mind to a subject which, if I mistake not, will yet exact from the living the admission, that it is not only irreligious and impolitic, but highly dangerous, to sanction or permit the execution of such sacrilegious and abomin- able acts as have very recently been exposed in the columns of the daily press. The parishioners of St. Ann’s, Soho, and S t. George’s, Bloomsbury, are bestir- ring themselves, whilst “ the vestry meeting of St. Botolph, Aldgate, summoned on the 24th of September last, amongst other things, to elect a sexton, was obliged to separate without completing its purpose, there being no candidate for the office of sexton resident in the parish.” It looks well for a parish containing a population of 9,525 souls, that there was no resident candidate for the office ; for as it is a compound one, and should include the duties of grave-digging, such as they are in the shamefully overcharged grave-yards of London, it argues a much improved condition of feeling, or appreciation rather, in the community of sextons. It looks well, therefore, I repeat, and is an earnest of better things; for when matters are at their worst, they sometimes mend. If the Committee of rate-payers appointed to inquire into the condition of St. Ann’s burying ground and vaults would turn to pages 53 and 71 of the Parlia_ mentary Report, “ Effect of Interment of Bodies,” they would find some evidence that might assist them in their deliberations, and possibly go some way in forming their conclusions. It is the more necessary that this evidence should be had in remembrance, because it appears, by the preliminary meeting, that the “ Churchwardens had examined the church-yard, and did not find it worse than it had been for the last four or five years ; and they did not see the necessity of a new church-yard, which would necessarily entail on the parish a very consi- derable expense.’’* We obtain some valuable information from the statements made before the Committee by Bartholomew Lyons, an ex-gravedigger of St. Ann’s, Soho. This man proved that graves 20 feet in depth are dug by order of the Board of Vestry on purpose to make the ground last longer ; that they sometimes break up the old coffins. He further states, that from every deep grave dug, coffin-wood sufficient to fill a dozen wheelbarrows was broken up. That a wretch named Fox had “ done most wonderful things in the vaults. He has been (he says) the biggest brute of any gravedigger in this earth, and he suffered for it at last; he died in the Strand union workhouse, actually rotten.” * Vide the Morning Journals.